This week's Lowdown: Marvel hits Fortnite

Get your mobile news fix. We’ve gathered together some of this week’s biggest mobile tech stories.

The Avengers are coming to Fortnite

Superhero loving Fortnite fans are in for a treat, with another Marvel mash-up heading to the mega-popular battle royale game this week. The crossover event kicks off on Thursday 25th April, a mere day before the epic Avengers: Endgame hits the cinemas.

The last Marvel character to land on Fortnite was Thanos, in a mode that let players become the wrinkle-chinned supervillain for a limited time. Epic is keeping the exact details of what to expect this time round a closely guarded secret, but it looks like players might be siding with the good guys. A teaser image shows a character holding Captain America’s shield, with the tagline “whatever it takes.” Any ideas, Fortnite fans?

A follow-up to Vine is up and running

Remember Vine? The six-second video looping app that took the mobile world by storm until it disappeared? Then you might be interested to hear that a follow-up is on its way. Vine’s co-founder, Dom Hoffman, has just announced that Byte is now ready for beta testing. It’s a new video-looping app which Hoffman describes as feeling exactly like Vine, but with some unique new features to be added before it launches.

TikTok currently reigns supreme as the world’s most popular short-form video app, with over 500 million active users. Will Byte be able to gobble up some of that success and make the same impact that Vine did? We’ll soon find out.

Is your password on the ‘most-hacked’ list?

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has completed its first UK Cyber Survey, and has managed to come up with a list of the most commonly hacked passwords on phones and laptops.

Here’s the top 5. If you’re using any of these, give yourself a slap on the wrist:

123456

123456789

Qwerty

Password

1111111

You can take a look at the full list here. But basically, if your password is easy to guess you should go ahead and change it to something more robust now. NCSC Technical Director Dr Ian Levy advises: “Nobody should protect sensitive data with something that can be guessed, like their first name, local football team or favourite band. Using hard-to-guess passwords is a strong first step and we recommend combining three random but memorable words. Be creative and use words memorable to you, so people can’t guess your password."

Qualcomm’s next chip will be 5G ready

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 735 processor is due at the end of the year, and it’s expected to be 5G-ready and suitable for mid-range smartphones. Detailed specs are still under wraps, but according to phonearena.com it could perform 20% better and 50% more efficiently than last year’s Snapdragon 710, which was no slouch itself. Another prediction is that this new processor will make thinner and lighter 5G smartphones a reality, and reduce the costs associated with this next-generation tech.

If it does launch before the end of the year, we’d expect to Snapdragon 735-powered smartphones make an appearance in the first half of 2020.